If Santa Anita Park’s new owners have their way, big changes are in the works for the historic Arcadia racetrack and the California horse racing industry.

Dennis Mills, vice chairman and CEO of Canada-based MI Developments, which owns the track, said the company is preparing to unveil a new business plan. Mills said MID will share the plan with unions, legislators, horse owners and breeders in the coming weeks.

“The thoroughbred racing industry in California needs comprehensive renewal, and there are a number of people in California that would like to defend decline,” Mills said. “Defending the status quo is defending decline. We will not defend the status quo.”

But some racing officials fear the other horseshoe may drop.

“They haven’t said much and that’s why we’re all anxious about what it is,” said Keith Brackpool, chairman of the California Horse Racing Board.

MID acquired Santa Anita from Magna Entertainment Corp. in April as part of a reorganization plan approved by a Delaware bankruptcy court. Since then, its new owners have voided a lease with the charitable Oak Tree Racing Association, leaving the location of its fall meet, traditionally at Santa Anita, up in the air.

MID is the parent company of MEC. Both entities are controlled by Canadian mogul and thoroughbred horse owner Frank Stronach.

In addition, MID voided a contract with Caruso Affiliated to build a roughly $500 million, 800,000-square-foot retail complex in the track’s parking lot.

MID officials have defended those moves, saying the company wants to negotiate more economically sensible deals with both entities. But some horse racing officials aren’t impressed with how MID has conducted itself so far, particularly with Oak Tree.

At a May 20 CHRB meeting, Brackpool compared MID’s recent actions to “a bull carrying around its own china shop.”

“They are entitled to void the leases if that’s what they want to do,” Brackpool said Friday. “I told them that I didn’t think their entry had been the height of diplomacy. If they sat down and worked with everybody, we could end up in a better position.”

Richard Mandella, a thoroughbred trainer and board member of Oak Tree, said he hopes MID will offer the racing association an equitable proposal. Oak Tree has held the meet at Santa Anita for the last four decades.

“We just have to hope that they have the best interest in racing at heart,” he said. “We’ve never dealt with them before. It’s a different company.”

The city of Arcadia, too, has made its disappointment over the contracts’ cancellation known.

If those two deals aren’t renegotiated, it “will negatively impact the community and will also negatively impact MID and their standing in the community,” Councilman Mickey Segal said.

While the City Council supports racing at Santa Anita, “it could affect the willingness of the community to support Santa Anita racing,” Segal said. “It could certainly affect the council’s willingness to cooperate with MID.”

Last week, Mills and MID’s Chief Operating Officer Don Cameron met with Caruso in Las Vegas to discuss a general proposal that could revive the Shops at Santa Anita project. Caruso said he had “a good meeting” and is hopeful they will be able to renegotiate a deal. MID officials are scheduled to present another proposal to Oak Tree on Friday.

Arcadia officials worry, too, that the Oak Tree lease cancellation could hurt Santa Anita’s chances to host future Breeders’ Cup Championships. The annual racing event, which was held at Santa Anita the last two years, brought both attention and tax dollars to the city, said Councilman Bob Harbicht.

“It’s a big deal in horse racing,” Harbicht said. “It’s like the Super Bowl. You get a lot of people coming into town, spending several days … It’s a big feather in the cap for Arcadia.”

The Breeders’ Cup has made no final decisions regarding host sites beyond this year’s race in Louisville, Ky., said the organization’s spokesman Jim Gluckson. The 2010 host site was announced well before the termination of the Oak Tree contract.

However, “we did not view the termination of that (Oak Tree) lease as a positive development,” Gluckson said.

He confirmed that the organization is also considering picking a permanent host site in the future from a number of racetracks, including Santa Anita.

Stronach, who chairs MID, is expected to present MID’s new plan at the CHRB meeting on June 21 at Hollywood Park.

“We have to figure out a way to get people focused on doing what we have to do to modernize the business in California,” Mills said.

Regardless of the business decisions MID makes, any kind of industry reform won’t be easy, Brackpool said. State laws regulating thoroughbred horse racing and racetracks have been in place for several decades.

Stronach reportedly favors changes such as deregulation of racing dates, but that would require a change approved by the state Legislature, Brackpool said.

But there is broad consensus that the industry needs to attract a younger, “Generation X” audience, and modernize its facilities and marketing techniques, he said.

“We need probably some legislative help to figure out how to get some increased capital into the business to accomplish these things,” Brackpool said. “The devil is in the details.”

Brackpool said he hopes the new racetrack owners will join the CHRB in an attempt to reform the industry.

“If you want to change the laws, work with the Legislature and horse racing interests in general to change the laws,” he said.

Mills said no one has invested more in thoroughbred racing than Stronach has, and the horse racing enthusiast continues to care deeply about improving the industry.

“Here’s a man that has invested over $200 million in thoroughbred racing industry,” Mills said. “Not one nickel of profit has been taken out of California racing assets under Frank Stronach’s leadership.”

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.